AMD turns in flat results for its Q4

Dark Mayor gone but no-one taken over

Chip contender Advanced Micro Devices(AMD) reported its fourth quarter sales at close of play yesterday and the results failed to fizzle.

Just a week after Dirk "Father of the Alpha" Meyer disappeared suddenly in a puff of Las Vegas smoke, AMD showed a profit of $375 million on turnover of $1.65 billion, with falling gross margins of 45.1 percent.

We need not feel too sorry for Dirk Meyer. Stand in CEO Thomas Seifert said that Meyer had departed with a tidy $12 million in compensation.

The immediate priority for AMD is to find a replacement for Meyer - a task that might be quite difficult. Seifert refused to comment on how well the head hunting was going but said that he'd let us know when a head had been hunted.

AMD's profit technically fell by nearly 70 percent compared to the same quarter a year ago, but then Intel is not going to pay AMD $1.24 billion every fourth quarter.